Art Miami 2022: #AM100

Yuko Nishikawa creates a fantastical environment with her colourful, textural lively forms. With a hands-on, exploratory approach, she makes paintings, lighting, mobiles and sculptures using a variety of mediums including clay, wire, fabrics, as well as repurposed materials such as recycled paper and used eyewear lenses.

Her work reflects her accumulative experiences in architecture, restoration, interior and furniture design, crafts and engineering. Growing up in a small seaside town just south of Tokyo, Japan, Nishikawa received her B.F.A. in Interior Design from New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology in 2002. Since then, she has surveyed courthouses, hospitals and federal buildings; documented the Guggenheim Museum’s facade for the restoration project in 2008; and assisted in hospitality and residential interior design projects for some of NYC’s leading studios such as Clodagh, Bilhuber Inc. and Alexandra Champalimaud.

She currently works in her studio in the industrial area in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY, which she built out with friends utilising demolished materials found in the building.

Yuko Nishikawa comments on her ‘Memory Tourist’ installation:

“Memory Tourist combines part of my recent installations with new work, whose wire forms create line drawings in the air and connect colorful and airy repurposed paper “Cookies” which move in response to us when we walk by them and stir the air. To make these Cookies, I collect used photo-background paper from artists and photographers in my Brooklyn studio building. I break it down to pulp, and formulate it with bookbinders' glue into an air-dry clay. The rich colors come directly from the colors of the donated paper; there are no added paints or pigments. I mix pulps the way I would mix paints to make additional colors and effects, by blending blue pulp and red pulp to make a purple clay, for example. Mushy pulps make homogeneous colors, while crumbly pulps have a stippled effect. Finely blended pulps form a smoother surface like macaroons while coarser pulps become bumpier like oatmeal cookies.Over the last year I made mobiles for specific times and places, first for Cape Cod in May, then next for Vermont in November, this Spring for different neighborhoods in my hometown Brooklyn, and then this Summer for San Francisco. Through my traveling for these installations I began to think of the memory of the material - the paper. It retains the colors and the fibers it originally had in these mobiles, whose elements interact with one another as they swing, recreate relationships, and then part ways, like those who visit a place for pleasure.”

__________________

UK-born Matt Smith is well known for his site-specific work in museums, galleries and historic houses. Using clay, textiles and their associated references, he explores how cultural organisations operate using techniques of institutional critique and artist intervention. He is interested in how history is a constantly selected and refined narrative that presents itself as a fixed and accurate account of the past and how, through taking objects and repurposing them in new situations, this can be brought to light. Of particular interest to him is how museums can be reframed into alternative perspectives.

"What museums collect, and what this tells us about what society deems important, is an ongoing fascination to me. Recent events have shown how important objects, and particularly sculpture, are in the national debate about who we are and how we got here. I have worked with museums many times over the last decade and I love interpreting and curating works to help the widest possible audience feel welcomed and visible within the museums," – Smith says.

In 2015/2016, Matt was Artist in Residence at the Victoria and Albert Museum. In 2009 he received the ARC Award for Craft from Aspex Gallery and was awarded the inaugural Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramics Prize in 2014. At Collect 2018, he was awarded "Object of the Show" by Ekow Eshun. For Collect 2020, Cynthia Corbett and Matt Smith co-curated a site-specific installation featuring textiles and black parian works. The curation was extremely well-received, and Matt was awarded the inaugural Brookfield Properties Crafts Council Collection Prize, which allowed the Crafts Council to purchase six artworks for the Council's collection. The V&A Museum's Design and Textiles department also acquired one of Matt's subversive embroideries. In June 2020 the Gallery’s long-standing partner Contemporary Art Society has acquired twelve ceramic and tapestry works by Matt Smith. This acquisition became a central focus for the displays at the Hove Museum. This exciting project was possible due to the Contemporary Art Society’s Rapid Response Fund in partnership with Frieze London, which is a new initiative supporting artists and museums during the Covid-19 pandemic. 2021 and 2022 saw Matt Smith’s textile and ceramic artworks join the collection of National Museums Northern Ireland.

Matt regularly exhibits his work at public collections including Coming Out, Walker Art Gallery 2017, A Place at the Table, Pallant House, 2014; Subversive Design, Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, 2013; DIY A Revolution in Handicrafts, Society for Contemporary Craft, Pittsburg, 2010.

Matt Smith started his career at the V&A before developing exhibitions at the Science Museum and the British Film Institute. After retraining as a ceramicist, his work has often taken the form of hybrid artist/curator. His large-scale solo shows have addressed themes including the legacy of colonisation in Losing Venus (Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford) and Flux: Parian Unpacked (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), LGBT visibility in Queering the Museum (Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, 2010) and Other Stories (Leeds University Art Collection, 2012). Matt co-directed and curated Unravelling the National Trust which saw over thirty artists working with contemporary craft (including himself) commissioned to respond to the histories of the National Trust properties Nymans House, Uppark House and The Vyne. Matt holds a practice-based PhD from the University of Brighton. The PhD explored the use of craft techniques in contemporary art by artists exploring identities. He is Professor of Ceramics and Glass at Konstfack University of the Arts, Stockholm and Honorary Fellow at the University of Leicester’s School of Museum Studies. His work is held in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Walker Art Gallery, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and the Fitzwilliam Museum as well as numerous private international collections.

Matt Smith is internationally represented by Cynthia Corbett Gallery

__________________

Klari Reis uses the tools and techniques of science in her creative process, constantly experimenting with new ways to apply materials and methods. She is driven by curiosity and her desire to explore and document the natural and unnatural with a sense of wonder and joy. Formally trained as an architect, the artist from her base in San Francisco (in proximity to one of the largest concentrations of life science/technology companies in the world) collaborates with local biomedical companies and is inspired by the cutting edge of biological techniques and discoveries.

The unifying theme of Klari Reis’s art is her mastery of a new media plastic, epoxy polymer, and the fine control she brings to its reactions with a variety of dyes and pigments. Her compositions display brightly coloured smears, bumps and blobs atop aluminium and wood panels. A skilled technician with a studio for a laboratory, Reis uses science in the service of her art.

Klari Reis's work has been exhibited worldwide and public collections include Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK; Next World Capital’s offices in San Francisco, Paris, and Brussels; MEG Diagnostic Centre for Autistic Children in Oxford, UK; Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London; the Stanford University Medical Center Hoover Pavilion in California; and Elan Pharmaceuticals, Genentech, Acetelion and Cytokinetics in South San Francisco.

Klari Reis is represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

__________________

‘America has Lichtenstein, we have Azzopardi!’ - Estelle Lovatt FRSA

Deborah Azzopardi acquired worldwide fame for her joyous Pop Art images she has created over the past 35 years. Her unique and feminine take on contemporary art is best described by the esteemed art critic Estelle Lovatt: ‘America has Lichtenstein, we have Azzopardi!’ Lovatt goes on to comment: “Sometimes you just want to curl up under a blanket. With a good book. A piece of chocolate. A man. This is what Deborah Azzopardi’s pictures make me feel like doing. They are me. They remind me of the time I had a red convertible sports car. I had two, actually. And yes, they are you, too. You immediately, automatically, engage with the narrative of Azzopardi’s conversational visual humour. Laughter is the best aphrodisiac, as you know. ... There’s plenty of art historical references from... Manet’s suggestive ‘Olympia’; Boucher’s thought-provoking... ‘Louise O’Murphy’ and Fragonard’s frivolous, knickerless, ‘The Swing’.... Unique in approach, you easily recognise an Azzopardi picture. ... Working simple graphics and toned shading (for depth), the Pop Art line that Azzopardi sketches is different to Lichtenstein’s. Hers is more curvaceous. Feminine.”

The world is familiar with Azzopardi’s artworks, as many of them have been published internationally. Her original paintings, such as the Habitat ‘Dating’ series (2004/08), the iconic ...One Lump Or Two? (2014) and Love Is The Answer (2016), created by the artist at the request of Mitch and Janis Winehouse as a tribute to their daughter, are in great demand. This year Azzopardi was commissioned to create two works celebrating the late Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee. The first, making use of platinum leaf, silver leaf, and diamond dust, presents an image of the young queen rendered in symbols of her long reign. The second, an image of Her Majesty’s coronation shoe done in silver and gold leaf, celebrates the design by Roger Vivier which allowed her to endure the 3-hour coronation.

Deborah Azzopardi is represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

__________________

In a contemporary art world that condemns beauty as camouflage for conceptual shallowness, championing high aesthetics is nothing short of rebellion. Dutch photographer Isabelle Van Zeijl takes female beauty ideals from the past, and sabotages them in the context of today. As a women she experiences prejudices against women; misogyny in numerous ways including sex discrimination, belittling/violence against women and sexual objectification. Van Zeijl aestheticises these prejudices in her work to visually discuss this troubling dichotomy, presenting a new way of seeing female beauty. An oppressive idealisation of beauty is tackled in her work through unique female character and emotion.

Van Zeijl is invested in her images. By using subjects that intrigue and evoke emotion, she reinvents herself over and over and has created a body of work to illustrate these autobiographical narratives. Her work takes from all she experiences in life - she is both model, creator, object and subject. Going beyond the realm of individual expression, so common in the genre of self-portraiture, she strives to be both universal and timeless, with a subtle political hint.

Isabelle Van Zeijl has shown work continuously and internationally over the past fifteen years, represented by galleries located in The UK, USA, The Netherlands, Belgium, and exhibiting at emerging and established international art fairs in New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, London, Germany, Belgium, Sweden and Italy. She was nominated for the Prix De La Photographie Paris, and The Fine Art Photography Awards. She was also one of the winners of The Young Masters Emerging Women Art Prize, London. Her work is held in private & public collections in the USA, UK, Belgium, Germany, France and The Netherlands.

Isabelle Van Zeijl is represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

__________________

Cristina Schek is the photosensitive kind. She thinks in pictures; her imagination is always in focus. A Transylvanian living in London, she creates worlds she calls "myth places”; they exist, each in their own ways.

Far removed from traditional or documentary photography, the camera is merely a tool for Cristina. She enjoys the freedom of layering and manipulating her photographs into creative montages, trusting her instinct for matching the raw material with the suggestive imaginings of her subconscious.

Often whimsical and a touch romantic, her photographs are given subtle alterations in a digital process that often takes months, resulting in carefully constructed compositions, which reveal the influence of the great Surrealists and Old Masters.

__________________

Eve De Haan is a young London-based artist of English and Mauritian heritage, with an incredible appetite for creativity. Her degree in Theology has informed and influenced her work, developing a strong body of installations which examine concepts of change and the imprint technology is having on youth culture.

She has exhibited in Europe and the U.S in iconic galleries such as the Saatchi gallery and the Museum of Neon in LA. She was recently invited to lead on an Instagram Live for Tate London. She has had billboards in London, created artwork for Nike & been featured in major publications. Her creations are provocative and challenging. Through her love of the written word Eve finds neon the perfect medium to explore the gradients and shades of meaning within a statement.

In April 2021 Eve De Haan shone a light on London streets and women’s safety issues with an illuminated billboard, promoting Reclaim These Streets ‘Text Me When You Get Home’ campaign aiming to make the UK a safer, fairer place for women. We are proud to be offering for acquisition the #4/4 Archival print created by Eve in addition to the billboard.

__________________

Christina Benz's works are visual comments on today‘s society. Previous works deal with the fragility of being and contain minimal scenarios with dark but humorous undertones. Many of the protagonists are constrained in prolonged repetitive situations, however undeterred, they continually strive to change their situation. Other works focus specifically on media culture. Benz touches upon issues of identity linked to consumerism, branding and self promotion. The artist offers a playfully clever criticism on the diktat of the meritocracy. Her most recent works are drawings on paper and animation short films drawn with sand.

__________________

Tuëma Pattie (b. 1938) was born in Dublin and studied at the Belfast College of Art, the Central School of Art and Design and Morley College, London, Piers Ottey and Christopher Baker in Sussex and Robin Child in Devon.

In her days in Belfast and London, she took advantage of urban scenes as her subject matter. She then had a long period in which she took time out to have two children and to support her husband in his career. This meant it was difficult to find the time for her beloved painting, as was the case for many women in that era.

With the move out of London in 1989, she did have the subsequent benefit of much foreign travel. Subject matter was carefully gathered with the resultant explosion of energy into her canvases, with paintings from the Galapagos, Antarctica, Spain, Italy and Uzbekistan as well as her beautiful West Sussex. It is from this period that she was able to develop into the world of experimental landscapes.

Tuëma Pattie has exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition; the Royal Hibernian Summer Exhibition; the Cork Street Gallery; Art for Youth at the Mall Gallery London; London Art Fair; the Chichester Open; the Moncrief Bray Gallery, the Kevis House Gallery and the Rowntree Tryon Gallery all in Petworth; APPART; the East Hampshire Art Fair; the Jorgensen Gallery in Dublin and at Glyndebourne.

“To me, painting has always been an opportunity to interpret imaginatively what I see in front of me. The facts are there – it is how one brings them to life that is the magic”, – Pattie says.

ArtNet News : Irish Artist Tuëma Pattie Disappeared From Public View for Decades. Now, a London Gallery Is Spotlighting Her Comeback and Artistic Transformation

__________________

We are delighted to present an inspiring In Conversation with two young emerging ceramicists, British artist Freya Bramble-Carter, who is represented by Cynthia Corbett Gallery and British Bahamas-based artist Florence St. George.

Art Miami 2022 will mark both Freya and Florence’s debut at this prestigious art fair. The collaborative series presented is entitled ‘The Mermaids Purse’. This collection of ceramics from Freya Bramble-Carter and Florence St. George was born of their mutual love of the Bahamian land and sea. Using clay that they foraged three years ago from East End Grand Bahama, they patiently waited for the clay to mature so that they could work with it. In early 2022 Freya returned to the Islands and the two potters worked night and day for two weeks collaborating on this collection also using finer clay to complement their new clam formed vases. Their studio is a space filled with love, fresh thoughts and a buzz of imaginative energy as they create and play with the clay together. These vases reflect the waves that crash on the sandy shores of the Bahamas, the petals and leaves that grow from the inside of the pot’s belly are like tongues, the voices echoing their journey. The pots are delicate, feminine yet strong and proud.

This In Conversation will allow guests to dive deeper into their collaborative practice by listening to both artists Florence (in person) and Freya (via Zoom), on what inspired them to join together in the creation of these beautiful and intricate ceramic pieces.

Cynthia Valianti Corbett comments on the exciting debut.

“We are thrilled to be presenting at Art Miami this Bahamanian creation by these two innovative and talented emerging British artists. Although the Bahamas is only a 45min flight from Miami, the

country has a unique environment, climate and culture that these two artists used as inspiration for their collaborative series. We hope the Miami audience will embrace and fall in love with this incredible body of work. As a champion of emerging talent, Cynthia Corbett Gallery has been exhibiting at Art Miami for over a decade.”

Art Miami, America’s foremost contemporary and modern art fair, and its sister fair, CONTEXT Art Miami, will kick-off Miami Art Week 2022, opening on Tuesday, November 29th with an invitation-only VIP Preview evening with public days beginning Wednesday, November 30th and running through Sunday, December 4th 2022. Visit Cynthia Corbett Gallery at Stand #AM100.

__________________

British Amy Hughes’s practice is both fuelled by and symbolic of the highly prestigious Porcelain wares produced at the Royal Sèvres Factory in the late 17th and 18th centuries. Hughes’ works reference and pay homage to the originals, but are created with a freer approach, giving them a new lease of life.

After Alhambra pieces take inspiration from the large lustre vases produced during the Nasrid Dynasty (the last Muslim Dynasty in the Iberian peninsula, ruling Granada) in the 14th and 15th centuries which became romantically known as 'Alhambra Vases', and of which only 8 remain in semi-intact existence today. The skill, the legend, the intrigue surrounding these vases captivated and fuelled my fascination to explore a contemporary response to the stunning relics. The forms, the two wing-like handles, the horizontal decorations all reference the originals, the rawness in composition and materiality nodding to their faded beauty. Drawing studies of their intricate surface pattern have been enlarged and explored on the coil and slab built forms creating exciting pattern and shape with a colourful and lively approach.

After Amphora pieces take inspiration from ancient Greek pottery, with a concern for form and decoration. The vases seek to 'talk' about the distinctive ancient storage jars and the intricate decoration that was painted upon them, now explored and enlarged on the coil and slab built forms, creating exciting patterns and shapes with a colourful, lively and painterly approach that gives them a new vibrant lease of life.

The After Alhambra and After Amphora pieces may take historical inspiration from ceramic artefacts of the Nasrid dynasty and Ancient Greece, but their modern day interpretation and reworking can be said to be directly influenced by contemporary culture(s), including fashion and print, explored through the bold use and application of colour, surface treatment and pattern across a form.

Physically, the creative worlds of both ceramics and fashion and textiles playfully explore materiality and its expression through their own different mediums but many parallels can be drawn between the two, as demonstrated and discussed here by the artist. The use of texture creates almost fabric like aesthetics on these ceramics, through layers of slip application creating depth akin to a knit or heavy weave, with more exposed or 'faded' areas gauze-like or requiring a darn. Areas of the transparent glaze application vs those unglazed, the smooth vs the rough, a silk vs heavy cotton, playing with light and movement. The wing-like handles and appendages are kindred to pattern cutting but with a rawness of a torn unfinished edge like a fray or a rip.

When making, the Ceramic Artist made multiple drawing studies of intricate Islamic surface patterns before enlarging details and boldly stencilling and tracing areas onto the vase bodies to create exciting and fresh patterns, all of which are applied with confident and lively expression supporting the historic yet present day link between art and fashion.

Amy Hughes works and exhibits internationally, including high profile Collect art fair with the Crafts Council with Cynthia Corbett Gallery and a spell as Artist in Residence at Konstfack School, Stockholm, Sweden. She was nominated to represent the UK in ‘New Talent’ at the European Ceramic Context 2014 as well as being shortlisted for the inaugural Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramics Prize 2014 for artists who show an exceptional command of ceramics, alongside an awareness of the heritage of ceramic craft.

In 2015, Hughes was chosen as the first Ceramics and Industry Artist in Residence at the Victoria & Albert Museum working in collaboration with 1882Ltd, as well as being selected as one of eleven artists for AWARD at the British Ceramics Biennial ‘presenting new works exemplifying the energy and vitality of the best of British contemporary ceramics practice.’

In 2018 her first solo show Garniture at Croome Court (part of the National Trust) was funded by Arts Council England – she had the opportunity of working with Croome Court's extensive collections. Most recently she was selected as one of 5 commissioned Artists to work with at The Leach Pottery St Ives on the Leach 100, which is part of centenary celebrations looking at the past, the present and the future of studio pottery. In 2021 she will be participating in For the Love of the Master: 25 artists fascinated by Piranesi – a group exhibition celebrating the legacy of this versatile Roman artist in the 21st century. This homage to Piranesi will be held in Dublin Castle & the Casino at Marino, Dublin.

Amy Hughes made her Art Miami debut with Cynthia Corbett Gallery in 2021 and was represented by Cynthia Corbett Gallery at London Art Fair 2022 and British Art Fair 2022.

__________________

Kgole’s work is typified by his use of Anaglyphs. Two versions of his composite photographic images are printed in different colours (typically blue and red) onto canvas then collage and paint are applied to the printed work. The viewer is then asked to view the work through glasses with red and blue filter lenses, creating a dramatic 3D effect. The glasses play the role of enhancing the viewer’s experience and relationship to the work, interacting with the work on a more intimate level. His works range from collage, ceramics, prints, oil paintings, digital, and sculpture. A Kgole piece is a merge of cultural, interpersonal, artistic, aesthetic, and psychological influence; all drawn through experiences of nomadic travelling and values in upbringing.

Giggs Kgonamotse Kgole, professionally known as Kgole, was born April 15 1997 in Kutupu Village, Limpopo-raised in Tembisa, Johannesburg. From a pool of 3000 applicants, he was one of 25 who earned a full scholarship to attended St John’s College, a prestigious, selective, and rigorous secondary institution. He completed high-school at St John’s with art honours, sports accolades, and leadership positions. Being the first person in his family to attend a private high-school and the first to reach and pass matric, Kgole considers St Johns as a unique achievement for himself as well as his family.

In 2017, a year after his first Solo exhibition he received a Prestigious Presidential Scholarship to study in Rome at John Cabot University, where he had his first solo showcase in Europe titled ‘Before the High Walls’. 2018 marked a new feat for him as he became one of Africa’s youngest gallery owners at the age of 21. GasLamp Gallery, located Johannesburg, South Africa was a contemporary art space for creatives who needed an opportunity to tell their stories in a commercial gallery.

In 2019, he spent six months in France, in a residency organized by Undiscovered Canvas and Mekanova Gallery in Cannes. He was named as the Mail and Guardian’s Top 200 young South Africans, he has also won the People’s choice awards for his masterpiece, “God Ke Mama”, which was the catalogue cover of the 10th Anniversary Young Masters Art Prize in London. Passionate about life, inspiring others and marking his name in history, Kgole continues to make enormous strides and take on the art world, one masterpiece at a time.

In 2020, he was part of 13 visual artists selected by American Academy Award nominated and winner filmmaker Ava DuVernay and Signature African Art gallery owner Khalil Akar to exhibit in the #SAYMYNAME artist-activist show in London. DuVernay aiming to bring traction to the Black Lives Matter Movement to international communities, Akar placing a magnifying to the movement through London’s art world. The show brings humanity to the lives of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd among other’s who lost their lives to systematic racism and police brutality. Kgole’s work, “Stop Killing Our Mothers” visualizes the torment and heaviness of loss coupled with the helplessness of fighting against a system that is built to erase you.

In 2021, he was part of 6 artists selected by English rugby player Maro Itoje in collaboration with Signature African Art (Khalil Akar) to unveil British black history untold in the school curriculum, “A History Untold.” The artists, a mix of continental African and African Diaspora, focused on the hidden and unrecognised nuances of black contribution to civilisation and society, rectifying the perspective, attitudes, and socio-cultural trajectory of what is defined as black history alongside society’s understanding of it and black people’s integrity and identity within it.

PHUTI is a collaboration between Giggs Kgole and Frans Thoka. This collage piece forms part of Kgole’s “Ke’ mama” Series. PHUTI (Springbok) is a portrait of an elderly woman who carries a weighted blanket of limitation, symbolised by the prison blanket wrapped over her shoulders like a traditional Basotho blanket. Phuti embraces her life’s challenges and stares forward into the future and the palms of creation in the form of her child’s growth and discovery as an artist. Despite the weight she carries, she breastfeeds a ball of abstract objects through her time as a loving mother ready to support her and her child’s dreams. The dried pumpkin is an object which has been in Kgole’s family village house in Limpopo from the moment he was 5yrs old. The pumpkin was used as a cup to collect and drink from it, both water and traditional home brewed beer from the Pedi tribe of South Africa, this is a practice that is used in celebration of thanksgiving of life and to give life. Thanksgiving here is a bond between mother and child. The yarn and fabric are symbolic items collected in Italy, which remind the artist of his childhood, using found objects like the Dadaist to create what resembles what looks like a child wrapping their arms over their mother's shoulder. This moment is frozen as hope for the potential bond will form with time. One has to spring up like a springbok and take on what the future olds, Phuti.

Yearn is as a dreamscape of Kgole’s 16 year old self yearning to be a world exhibiting contemporary visual artist, how a teenage dream never died despite the harsh realities of life after leaving the schooling environment and trying to send a message of hope from Africa to the world. Growing up in South Africa, Kgole found himself in environments that discouraged prospects of a child making artworks and playing with paints. When environments that are against our dreams push down hard on one’s growth, all a child could continue to do is live their futures in their dreams. With time comes a moment when those dreams stop becoming dreams as you realise that you do not need any one’s permission to be. ‘I didn’t ask for your Permission to be Kgole’ is what the dreamscapes message was for him, however, questions the viewer on what they shouldn’t ask for permission for in their own lives

__________________

Alastair Gordon is a London based artist and lecturer. Works feature in various public, corporate and private collections including the Simmons and Simmons Collection and Beth de Woody Collection. Recent solo exhibitions at the Ahmanson Gallery, Los Angeles and First Things Gallery, New York. He was awarded the inaugural Shoosmiths painting prize in 2014 and has been shortlisted for various other awards including the Dentons Art Prize and Jacksons Painting Prize this year.

Central to Alastair's practice is the notion of a painting as a cultural artefact. At first these are paintings about paintings: images that oscillate between artefact and artifice. Certain questions emerge about the replication of the image, craft of the artist and certainty of the viewer. Notions of authenticity lie at the heart of Gordon’s artistic enquiry. He finds himself looking for evidence of the real thing. Artists’ materials such as masking tape and paper are rendered in paint to appear as taped or pinned on a wooden surface, a practice that refers to a specific form of illusionism that proliferated in XVII century Northern Europe called quodlibet (Latin “what you will”). As Jean Baudrillard wrote in The System of Objects: “We are fascinated by what has been created…because the moment of creation cannot be reproduced.”

Alastair debuted his work with the Cynthia Corbett Gallery at London Art Fair in January 2020 – and Scope NY March 2020 to great critical and collector response. Since then, Gordon’s work has been repeatedly featured in exhibitions by the gallery and was debuted with great success at Art on Paper fair in New York and exhibited at British Art Fair in London.

Alastair is course leader for Professional Practice at the Leith School of Art, Edinburgh where he also coordinates their graduate residency programme. He was recently artist in residence for the City and Guilds of London Art School. He draws every day and works out of his South London studio where he is currently working on new paintings.

__________________

Fabiano Parisi began his career as a photographer following a degree in Psychology, coming to photography through a project photographing derelict asylums, which sparked his interest in the abandoned buildings which are the subject of his art practice today. He has two ongoing series: The Empire of Light and Il Mondo Che Non Vedo (The World I Do Not See). The latter title is taken from a collection of poems by Fernando Pessoa, a hint at the poetic qualities of Parisi’s work. What is so striking about Parisi’s work is his use of light, his relationship not just to history but to the theme of the ruin in Art History, and the composition and surface of his work. The power of Parisi’s work lies in the strength and command of his image-making, never straying from a strictly symmetrical approach, which allows the viewer to assume his viewpoint within the building, the wide-angle lens giving a sense of depth and breadth, without compromising on detail.

Parisi uses only natural light, shooting early in the morning. The colours and chiaroscuro are at their best at this time of day, and are left untouched by digital image manipulation software. Parisi’s photographs have an honesty and integrity that is part of what makes them so inviting. The artist often selects buildings with frescoed walls, which create an illusion of a painterly surface in his photographs and a textural sensibility that belies the photograph’s flat surface. His method highlights the patina of these forgotten places. The artist prints his work himself onto carefully chosen papers that enhance and maximise his colours and tones. Parisi has a strong relationship to Art History; the subject of the ruin was prevalent in the 18th and 19th Centuries, and interest is still strong today as evidenced by Tate Britain’s 2014 exhibition ‘Ruin Lust’. From painters such as Piranesi to Turner to Constable, Parisi is part of an important genre in art.

Parisi participated in the 54th Venice Biennale, Italian Pavilion and in Fotografia Festival Internazionale di Roma in 2012 at the Macro Museum. In 2010 he was the winner of the Celeste Prize International for photography in New York; in 2012 he was shortlist for the Arte Laguna Prize, Venice where he was award a special Prize and in 2012 & 2014 he was shortlisted & announced finalist for the Young Masters Art Prize (a not-for-profit initiative presented by The Cynthia Corbett Gallery, London).

Fabiano Parisi is represented internationally by the Cynthia Corbett Gallery

__________________

Elaine Woo MacGregor is a Scottish-born Chinese artist trained in the Glasgow School of Art. She graduated with a Bachelors Degree with honours, acquired a studio and began working as a full-time artist. MacGregor began to be noticed as a serious and thoughtful painter and her first solo exhibition was 'Portraits' in Glasgow.

Elaine Woo MacGregor's work encapsulates the world seen through the eyes of a cross-cultural artist. She uses eclectic mark making and imagery to create atmospheric and theatrical scenes. Although her painted stories are often fictitious, elements of the picture are based on real people, places and things. Elaine Woo MacGregor’s narrative is drawn from everyday life, dreams, films, and folklore. She works in the domestic tradition of great women artists like Berthe Morisot to Paula Rego.

Elaine Woo MacGregor has exhibited in galleries in Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, Cambridge and abroad. One of her works - 'Hotel No.4' - is in the public galleries collection, the Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport. MacGregor's work has been shown in the U.K, U.S.A, Australia and Thailand and critically recognised by virtue of the Dewar Arts Award, the James Torrance Memorial Award, the Hope Scott Trust Award and the Cross Trust Fund.

Elaine Woo MacGregor is internationally represented by Cynthia Corbett Gallery since 2022.

__________________

Lauded by Annabel Sampson, Deputy Editor of Tatler as “the next David Hockney” painter Andy Burgess, who hails from London but lives in Arizona, continues to expand upon his fascination with contemporary architecture. A new series of paintings on panel and canvas colourfully re-imagines iconic modernist and contemporary houses. Burgess selects the subjects for his paintings with the discernment of the portrait painter. Buildings are chosen for their clean lines, bold geometric design, and dynamic forms. Burgess approaches his subjects with a fresh eye, simplifying and abstracting forms even further and inventing, somewhat irreverently, new colour schemes that expand the modernist lexicon beyond the minimalist white palette and rigid use of primary colours. Real places are sometimes re-invented, the architecture and design altered and modified, with new furniture and landscaping and a theatrical lighting that invests the painted scene with a dream-like quality and a peaceful and seductive allure.

Burgess explores in depth the genesis of modern architecture in Europe and the US and its relationship to modern art, avant-garde design, and abstract painting. Burgess explains his fascination with modernist architecture thusly:

‘Despite the huge impact of early modern architecture, the innovative and subtle minimalist buildings that I am researching, with their concrete and steel frames, flat roofs, and glass walls, never became the dominant mode of twentieth century building. We have continued to build the vast majority of houses in a traditional and conservative idiom, so that these great examples of modern architecture, designed by the likes of Gropius, Loos and Breuer to name but a few, are still shocking and surprising today in their boldness and modernity, almost a hundred years after they were built.’

Alongside the large-scale paintings, Burgess creates collages which reflect his love of vintage graphics, particularly those from the 1930s–50s, a “golden age” in American graphic design and advertising. Burgess has been collecting vintage American ephemera for many years; this ephemera is then unapologetically deconstructed, cut up into tiny pieces and reconstructed into visual and verbal poems, dazzling multi-coloured pop art pieces, and constructed cityscapes.

Burgess has completed many important commissions for public and private institutions including Crossrail (London’s largest ever engineering project), Cunard, APL shipping, Mandarin Oriental Hotels, a new medical centre in San Jose, California and most recently, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London.

In 2021 Andy Burgess started creating a series of site-specific artworks for the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London. The project, initiated by CW+ – the official charity of the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust – and facilitated by Cynthia Corbett Gallery, which represents Burgess internationally, aims to improve and enhance the NICU environment for patients, relatives and staff.

Working together with the NICU team, Burgess was reminiscing on the hospital’s neighbourhoods and its iconic views, sights and buildings in collaboration with hospital staff. Known for his unique, abstract and colourful style, Andy has transformed selected London scenes into incredible artworks to create a warm and welcoming environment for both parents and staff to enjoy. The display, installed on the 16th June 2022, includes a panorama of London, an image of Albert Bridge and another of a London Underground station. Additionally, Andy produced two smaller scale abstract pieces developed from the colour palettes of his larger works, which were gifted as part of the commission. CW+ also acquired two existing works by Andy for the unit through Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

Burgess’s collectors include the Booker prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro, actor and writer Emma Thompson, the Tisch family in New York, Beth De Woody, Board Member of The Whitney Museum and Richard and Ellen Sandor in Chicago, who have one of the top 100 art collections in America.

Andy Burgess has been represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery since 2004.